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The first regular English journalists may be identified with the writers of manuscript “news-letters,” originally the dependants of great men, each employed in keeping his own master or patron well-informed, during his absence from court, of all that happened there. The duty grew at length into a calling. The writer had his periodical subscription list, and instead of writing a single letter wrote as many letters as he had customers. Then one more enterprising than the rest established an “intelligence office,” with a staff of clerks, such as Ben Jonson’s Cymbal depicts from the life in The Staple of News, acted in 1625, which is the best-known dramatic notice of the news-sheets.

Of the earlier news-letters good examples may be seen in the Paston Letters, and in the Sydney Papers. Of those of later date specimens will be found in Knowler’s Letters and Despatches of Strafford, and other well-known books. Still later examples may be seen amongst the papers collected by the historian Thomas Carte, preserved in

the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Of these, several series were addressed to the first duke of Ormond, partly by correspondents in England and Ireland, partly by correspondents in Paris; others were addressed to successive earls of Huntingdon; others, again, to various members of the Wharton family. And similar valuable collections are to be seen in the library of the British Museum, and in the Record Office in London. In Edinburgh the Advocates’ Library possesses a series of the 16th century, written by Richard Scudamore to Sir Philip Hoby during his embassy to Vienna. The MS. news-letters—some of them proceeding from writers of marked ability who had access to official information, and were able to write with greater freedom and independence of tone than the compilers of the printed news—held their ground, although within narrowing limits, until nearly the middle of the 18th century. The distinction between the news-letter and the newspaper is pointed out in the preceding section.

It was at one time believed that the earliest regular English newspaper was an English Mercurie of 1588, to which George Chalmers, the political writer and antiquarian, referred in his Life of Ruddiman (1794) as being (with others of the same date) in the British Museum. The falsehood of this supposition, which was long accepted on

Chalmers’s authority, was, however, pointed out by Thomas Watts, of the British Museum, in 1839, in a volume with the title Letter to Antonio Panizzi on the Reputed earliest printed Newspaper, and again in 1850, in an article in the Gentleman’s Magazine (n.s. xxxiii 485-491). The documents in question are (1) a MS. unnumbered issue of the English Mercurie, dated “Whitehall, July 26th, 1588”; (2) a printed copy, No. 50, of

July 23, 1588; (3) a printed copy of No. 51; (4) a printed copy of No. 54, of November 24, 1588; (5) and three other MS. copies. These were included in a collection bequeathed to the Museum of Dr Birch (1766), and are incontestably 18th-century forgeries The handwriting of the spurious MSS. was identified by a letter among Dr Birch’s correspondence as that of Philip Yorke, afterwards 2nd Lord Hardwicke, and there were trifling corrections in Dr Birch’s handwriting, showing that he was a party with Yorke, the author, to the mystification. No information is forthcoming as to the object of it, but it is worth mentioning that Yorke and his brother also published a clever jeu d’esprit called The Athenian Letters, purporting to be a transcript from a Spanish translation of letters written by a Persian agent during the Peloponnesian War; so that it may be inferred that this sort of thing recommended itself to Yorke, and not necessarily for any deception.

Various English pamphlets, as well as French, Italian and German, occur in the 16th century with such titles as Newes from Spaine, and the like. In the early years of the 17th century they became very numerous; the Charles Burney collection in the British Museum is particularly valuable for this early period, the newsbooks and newspapers in it commencing with a “relation” of 1603. In 1614 we find Burton (the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy) pointing a sarcasm against the non-reading habits of “the major part” by adding, “if they read a book at any time ’tis an English chronicle, Sir Huon of Bordeaux, Amadis de Gaul, &c., a play-book, or some pamphlet of news.” But up to 1641, owing to the fact that to print domestic news was barred by the royal prerogative, the English periodicals which are to be considered as strictly the forerunners of the regular newspaper were only translations or adaptations of foreign periodicals containing news of what was going on abroad.

There is in the British Museum a Mercurius Gallobelgicus; Sive rerum in Gallia et Belgio potissimum, Hispania quoque, Italia, Anglia, Germania, Polonia, Vicinisque Locis ab anno 1588 usque ad Martium anni praesentis 1594 gestarum, nuncius. Opusculum in Sex libris qui totidem annos complectuntur, divisum ''auctore D. M. Jansonio Doccomensi Frisio. Editio altera.'' ''Coloniae Agrippinae. Apud Godefridum Kempensem. Anno'' MDXCIV. This production of Janson’s at Cologne is a fairly thick octavo book, giving a Latin chronicle of events from 1587 to 1594, and is really a sort of annual register. It was continued down to 1635. The Mercurius Gallobelgicus is chiefly interesting because, by circulating in England, it started the idea of a periodical supplying foreign news, and apparently became to English contemporaries a type of the newfangled news-summaries. In 1614 there was published in London a little square book (45 pp.), by Robert Booth, A Relation of all matters passed since March last to the present 1614, translated according to the originall of Mercurius Gallobelgicus, which has the running title Mercurius Gallobelgicus his relation since March last. From a repetition of such “relations” at irregular intervals, to the periodical publication of news-books with a common title in a numbered series, was a natural development. Thus on the 1st of June 1619 Ralph Rounthwaite entered at Stationers’ Hall A Relation of all matters done in Bohemia, Austria, Poland, Sletia, France, &c., that is worthy of relating, since the 2nd of March 1618 (1619 N.S.) until the 4th of May. Again at the beginning of November 1621 Bartholomew Downes and another entered in like manner The certaine and true newes from all parts of Germany and Poland, to this present 20 of October 1621. No copy of either of these papers is now known to exist. Nor is any copy known of the Courant or Weekly Newes from foreign parts of October 9, 1621—“taken out of the High Dutch,”—mentioned by John Nichols. But in May 1622 we arrive at a regular weekly newspaper which may still be seen in the British Museum.